Tag: jimhall

Jim Hall, Concierto

Album of the Day, August 26, 2023

We’ve met guitarist Jim Hall before, several times—once with Bill Evans in arguably his most famous recording, once with the Kronos Quartet years later revisiting that material—but never as a leader. He recorded a lot of sessions on small labels in the years leading up to today’s 1975 session, but almost always in duos or as a sideman; his first proper solo album, after a 1957 record on Pacific Jazz, came in 1969 on tiny label MPS (which we’ll hear another day), and another followed in 1972 on Milestone. But his best work came with collaborators, and for Concierto, his only solo headlining session on CTI Records, Creed Taylor surrounded him with some of the best: alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, trumpeter Chet Baker, pianist Roland Hanna, drummer Steve Gadd, and the redoubtable bassist Ron Carter. Don Sebesky is here as arranger, but the record is straight-ahead jazz untouched by orchestra, and that’s just fine.

Hall’s touch on the guitar is always lyrical and melodic even when he’s navigating challenging chord changes, and that’s in evidence on the opening track, “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” Hall opens the tune with Gadd, Hanna and Carter accompanying, then spins into a solo that exercises all the rhythmic flexibility and complexity in the tune before handing over to Paul Desmond. Desmond’s trademark romanticism and restraint are both on display for his short solo, which takes a second verse with Chet Baker’s accompaniment underneath. Baker then takes a proper straight-ahead solo, handing off to Roland Hanna, who takes his own run at the tune while playing with its rhythm and articulation. Carter has his own moment to stretch out, accompanied only by Hall, who picks up his pattern and enters into a duo seemingly simultaneously as Gadd enters on cymbals. At over seven minutes, the track isn’t exactly short, but it feels like it flies by.

“Two’s Blues” is what it says on the tin, a straight ahead blues that features Hall trading lines with Chet Baker. We haven’t come across Baker before in these posts, but his legend precedes him: coming up at the same time as Miles and with (initially) a similar trumpet sound, he cut many “cool jazz” classics as both a trumpeter and a vocalist, but wasn’t able to overcome his addiction to heroin. Here he’s in fine form, providing a melodic solo, but Hall’s solo is blistering, laying down a run of chords that take the song through multiple key changes, then switching it up to a pure melody again.

“The Answer is Yes” is played here as a straight ballad with a solo introduction by Hall, and then an opening in-tempo statement of the melody by Baker. Hall plays the bridge accompanied by Gadd and Carter, and keeps going into a solo that hands off to Hanna, who elegantly improvises around the melody. Baker’s solo relaxes into the tune with Hall playing counterpoint underneath; Hall picks up the solo from there as in the opening, and the whole band plays out. At the ending, Baker plays the melody with Hall answering in a call-and-response form.

The first three tracks, as gorgeous as they are, are really only a warmup for the main event, Hall’s take on Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, which occupies the entirety of Side B. The work was already famous thanks to Miles and Gil Evans’ adaptation of it for trumpet and jazz orchestra in Sketches of Spain, but Rodrigo originally wrote it for the guitar, and Hall’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” is a master lesson in blurring the lines between classical and jazz. The opening features Hall playing the melody on electric guitar and accompanying himself with an overdubbed Spanish guitar while Carter provides a sort of bass continuo. Baker and Desmond alternate measures in the initial statement of the melody, and Hall picks it up with Desmond playing counterpoint. And then comes the Sebesky pivot, as Carter lays down a bass line and the whole arrangement shifts into a samba-flavored adaptation of the melody. Here it works; there are no strings, no electric piano, just the core band backing up Hall’s improvisations. Gadd is more active on this track, pushing the beat forward insistently beneath a sensitive solo by Desmond. Baker plays a melancholy solo that combines the lyricism of early 1960s Miles with some of the forthright assertiveness of Freddie Hubbard. Hanna’s solo again plays with rhythm, making more of the samba influence in the arrangement and then shifting into a syncopation that Hall picks up in his next solo. The full band comes back in for a moment, then Hall (again on electric and Spanish guitar), Carter, and Gadd wrap up the track, lingering on the melancholy final notes.

The session for Concierto recorded an additional five(!) bonus tracks that are available on the CD and digital reissues of the album, but the four tracks on the original LP stand as classics of the straight-ahead side of CTI as well as standouts in Hall’s recorded output. Always a gifted collaborator, he rarely performed the long-form arrangements typical of CTI, preferring more straightforward and intimate renditions. We’ll hear one of his early records as leader another time; next week we’ll hear from another guitarist and a completely different flavor of the CTI sound.

You can listen to the album here:

Kronos Quartet, Music of Bill Evans

Album of the Week, March 4, 2023

Over the albums of the past few weeks we’ve listened to the Bill Evans Trio play an assortment of covers and original Evans compositions. Today’s record pays tribute to Evans the composer—with help from of his collaborators—in an unusual form: the string quartet.

Violinist David Harrington formed the Kronos Quartet in Seattle in 1973, but soon relocated to San Francisco and the classic line-up—John Sherba on second violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Jean Jeanrenaud on cello—was in place by 1978. The group focused on modern repertoire but did not limit itself to classical music, and its second major label release was 1985’s Monk Suite: Kronos Quartet Plays Music of Thelonious Monk, featuring arrangements by Tom Darter and guest appearances by Ron Carter and Chuck Israels on bass. The album was a surprise hit, and the group followed it in 1986 with Music of Bill Evans, which also featured arrangements by Darter and guest appearances by Eddie Gómez and by guitarist Jim Hall. In another connection to Evans, the record was produced by Riverside Records founder Orrin Keepnews.

The arrangements throughout begin as transcriptions of the original trio performances, then branch out to add some solo opportunities for members of the quartet and their guests. The solos by Gómez on “Waltz for Debby” and “Very Early” shine brilliantly in this context, with a bite and snap on the opening number and a meditative glow on the second. A little seems lost in translation in the string solos in “Debby,” though, where the tone feels a little like a hoedown. One thing the quartet gets right in the opening number, though, is the fluidity of the time in the chorus, with the first rendition coming across as a bouncy swing and the second as a time-shifted, smeary triple rhythm.

“Nardis” is a showcase for Gómez, who takes the opening solo with some ferocity. The intensity diminishes a little with the entrance of the violin solo, but overall it’s a fine rendition of the Miles/Evans classic, particularly the finale. “Re: Person I Knew” captures the shifting harmonic colors of the Evans classic (anagrammatically named for Keepnews), with Jeanrenaud’s cello ably providing the melodic and harmonic grounding originally provided by Chuck Israels’ bass. Of all the performances here, it translates best to the quartet form.

“Time Remembered” is an exploration of the harmonic depths of Evans’ ballad playing. Hearing the string parts, one is tempted to go back and listen to the original recordings and revel in the newly clarified harmonies and chords, which sometimes seem to pass by too quickly and unremarked-upon in the trio recordings.

Jim Hall joins the quartet for the next three works: “Walking Up,” “Turn Out the Stars,” and “Fire.” As Keepnews writes in the liner notes, the outer two works of this “mini-suite” “could help destroy the myth that Evans was merely a master of slow tempos”; though the performance of “Walking Up” does not reach the velocity that Evans reached in his short-lived quartet with Jack DeJohnette, the energy is there, especially when Hall’s guitar begins to explore the harmonic complexities of the tune. “Turn Out the Stars,” by contrast, is a deeply introspective work, made all the more poignant by Hall’s unaccompanied, spontaneous closing solo in memory of his friend.

“Peace Piece” closes the album. The quartet unhurriedly explores this great work by Evans that would later be mined by Miles Davis for “Flamenco Sketches,” with the second violin, viola and cello sketching the hypnotically repeating chords of the left hand and Harrington playing a transcription of Evans’ right hand. Here again in the string transcription, the brilliant strangeness of Evans’ harmonic senses shine more clearly, giving us a better appreciation for the genius of his conception.

Though the recording succeeds brilliantly both at illuminating Evans the composer and the performer, this would be the last of the Kronos albums to be devoted entirely to jazz. In subsequent albums they would lean into the contemporary repertoire for string quartets. We’ll hear a particularly notable performance from them next time.

You can listen to the album here:

Bill Evans and Jim Hall, Undercurrent

Album of the Week, January 14, 2023

In April 1962, Bill Evans was still digging out from under the emotional burden of Scott LaFaro’s death, but at least he was recording. After Orrin Keepnews persuaded him to return to the studio with Herbie Mann in late 1961, he was intermittently in and out of the studio in various contexts — a brief session with the new trio that wouldn’t see the light of day until 2007, a recording with Todd Dameron’s orchestra, a solo session. And on April 24, he entered the Sound Makers Studio in New York City to record with a new collaborator, guitarist Jim Hall.

Hall had built a reputation in the late 1950s in the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, and went on to collaborate with a number of musicians in the following years, including Dave Brubeck’s long-time collaborator Paul Desmond, and Sonny Rollins (that’s Hall on Rollins’ The Bridge). Along the way he had appeared opposite Evans when the latter was in Tony Scott’s quartet, and with the Giuffre Trio opposite Evans in Miles’ band in a run of dates at Café Bohemia in 1958. (Hall recalls, “Miles would tease that our silly little trio would get more applause than his group.”)

The two men got together to toss around some ideas in Evans’ New York apartment, and then headed into the studio, recording the album on April 24 and May 14, bracketing the final recording session for Nirvana with Herbie Mann and the Evans trio. What happened in the studio is an example of jazz alchemy. The two players throughout listen to each other intently, trading melodic ideas and completing each others’ harmonic sentences.

The version of “My Funny Valentine” that opens the album shows off the duo’s musical imagination. Far removed from the meditative flavor of Miles’ various interpretations of the tune, the two take the tune at a breakneck speed that shows off the interplay between the two. In the first chorus, Evans takes the lead, but Hall’s accompaniment anticipates the chord changes up the scale, practically pulling Evans up after him! After the first chorus, things start to breathe a little more, with both Evans and Hall leaving rests in their solos between ideas, as though punctuating a conversation.

The second track, “I Hear a Rhapsody,” likewise flips around the convention established by John Coltrane and others who had covered this unlikely jazz standard. Where Coltrane’s recording takes a brisk pace, Hall and Evans meditate on the tune, with Hall’s guitar setting the pace via an out of tempo introduction that settles into a 60bpm reverie. Again, Evans and Hall exchange ideas in a way that seems psychic.

“Dream Gypsy” continues the trance, this time in a waltz. There is more than a hint of “Blue in Green” in the introduction, but rather than heading into modal bliss, this first performance of the lovely Judith Veevers tune settles into a dark mode with flavors of Spanish guitar.

The opening of the second side, Jim Hall’s “Romain” sounds as though it should be “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” before it turns a corner, and changes key. There’s still a tinge of the Cole Porter number in the song, but the melody circles around G minor, as though reluctant to leave, before returning to C major, not quite performing the “major to minor” transition from the earlier song. It’s bewitching, and the duo keeps the tempo moving so that the end effect is bluesy rather than lugubrious.

John Lewis’ “Skating in Central Park” likewise has a touch of the familiar about it, but the genial waltz sweeps you along too ingratiatingly to worry about where you might have heard a bit of it before, circling the proverbial pond until it reaches a final climactic chord.

“Darn That Dream” continues in much the same key as “Central Park,” but freely, with a short introduction by Evans yielding to an unaccompanied solo by Hall. The performance has the feel of the best of Bill Evans, that quiet moment where the chords give way into a moment of transfiguration. He was to find that transcendent quality in the next recording project he did, which would see him return to the studio with his new trio; we’ll hear from them next week.

A note on the cover: that’s a photograph from a 1947 Harper’s Bazaar shoot by fashion photographer Toni Frissell at Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida. The tourist attraction, known for its live “mermaids,” is still in operation today.

You can listen to the album here: